Yo, GOPers fretting over Romney's "gaffe" about not being worried about poor people. It wasn't a gaffe, it's a line from his stump speech he repeats in variation everywhere he goes, and for my money one of the most troubling things about Romney. It's not that the Obama ads will suggest he's anti-poor when we know he isn't. You guys are worried about image, how about worrying that he frames everything in class-warfare-light? Look at what he says in an interview "dialing the gaffe back:"

“Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad. I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have the safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them. The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor.
And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety
net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on
middle income Americans. My campaign — you can choose where to focus.
You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the
very poor. That’s not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans,
retirees living on Social Security, people who can’t find work, folks
that have kids getting ready to go to college. These are the people who
have been most badly hurt during the Obama years (transcript from here).

The explanation is worse than the original remark! Since when is it the part of the Republican candidate to group people by class and have the government choose which class to favor? I thought we freedom-lovers hated that stuff and cared about making opportunity available for
everyone? When is he going to talk about freedom for individuals and
families, and not about him swooping in to help members of a particularly
burdened class? And if that's his vision, exactly how is it different
from Obama, except by degree? I become more convinced that Santorum is right, Romney can't make a sufficient distinction between himself and Obama. This is the same Progressive crud, just less bold.